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CNN NEWSROOM

Tornado Outbreak In Plains Splinters Homes, Several Hurt; Feds Focus On Ties to ISIS Hacker In Syria; Lawmakers Focus On Recruiting, Social Media; Report: Super Bowl Champs Likely Cheated; Interview with Congressman Lee Zeldin of New York. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired May 7, 2015 - 09:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


[09:00:03] MICHAELA PEREIRA, HOST, CNN'S "NEW DAY": Yes, they do.

CHIRS CUOMO, HOST, CNN'S "NEW DAY": They weren't the originals, but now they may even mean more.

PEREIRA: Incredible.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, HOST, CNN'S "NEW DAY": That's so great.

PEREIRA: Time for NEWSROOM with Carol Costello. What a way to end the show, Carol.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: It was a great way to end the show. Have a great day. Thank you so much. NEWSROOM starts now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO (voice-over): Happening now in the NEWSROOM, severe spring storms across Oklahoma and Kansas spawning dozens of tornadoes and creating major flooding.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is trying to move the car on to here. It is bad news. It's cranking down to the ground.

COSTELLO (voice-over): This morning water remains a huge problem with the devastation left behind.

And a British hacker could be the new link between ISIS and the Texas shooting at a cartoon contest. His ties to the man behind the attack.

Plus, deflated. 16 weeks and a Super Bowl win later, we now know the New England Patriots were probably aware Tom Brady was using underinflated footballs, or do we?

Let's talk live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: Good morning. I am Carol Costello. Thank you for joining me. Tornadoes batter America's heartland and the threat is not over yet. Large twisters like this one shredding the Plains. In all, 46 tornadoes reported and some as late as 3:00 in the morning. The aftermath devastating. Homes in splinters this morning. Then there is the rain. Roads look like rivers in Oklahoma. New pockets of flash flooding like this still a concern today.

Chad Myers is tracking the storm. He joins us from Atlanta. Good morning.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Good morning, Carol. The crazy part about yesterday was all the way from western Nebraska all the way down to Texas, we had tornadoes on the ground. There are 46 reports, and that doesn't mean 46 tornadoes technically, because one guy could have looked at it this way and reported a tornado and then another person looked at it that way, reported the same tornado. Weather service will be out there later today. But what is important to know is that these tornadoes will continue through Sunday.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MYERS (voice-over): Debris launching into the sky.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mike, we have a roof that just flew through the air here. I don't know where it came from.

MYERS (voice-over): Tornadoes reeking havoc, yet again, across the Plains.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Large tornado north of Verden, Oklahoma.

MYERS (voice-over): Residents in the heartland --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think I got trees coming down on me and power flashes. I got to back out of here!

MYERS (voice-over): -- waking up to disaster, as the Red Cross and emergency personnel begin combing through the neighbors damaged or destroyed in Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I saw two clouds meet as one, and then we could hear the sound of a train, our ears started popping because of the air pressure.

MYERS (voice-over): For the first time in history, the National Weather Service declaring a flash flood emergency in Oklahoma City.

The massive storm causing up to 8 inches of rainfall in a matter of hours.

The main airport in Oklahoma City shut down as employees and passengers evacuate through a pedestrian tunnel.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You need to take shelter immediately. This is a large tornado which is continuing to grow in size.

MYERS (voice-over): South of Oklahoma City, the hardest hit, lightning flashing through a wall of clouds as tornadoes rip roofs off buildings, including the side of this hotel.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm in the middle of tornado damage right now.

MYERS (voice-over): At least three residents in critical condition after a tornado flattened the mobile home park.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've got power flashes in front of me.

MYERS (voice-over): The tornado emergency, including the city of Moore.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The entire screen is a tornado, folks.

MYERS (voice-over): Where just two years ago a massive EF-5 tornado killed dozens of people and demolished over a thousand homes.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MYERS: Carol, so how did we just turn on this severe weather switch? Well, the jet stream has changed direction from the southwest now. The moisture out of the Gulf of Mexico, the dry air this way and all the way through the plains for the next four days, severe weather today into tomorrow, into Saturday. So it's going to be one day after another.

Even into Sunday, slightly further to the east, and the dangerous part that you talked about earlier, some of these tornadoes happen after dark, as late as 3:00 a.m., and you probably will be sleeping. Make sure you have one of those apps on your phone that can wake you up if a tornado warning is issued for your county. Carol.

COSTELLO: Great advice. Chad Myers, thanks so much.

Turning now to Sunday night's attack in Texas. Investigators chase leads overseas and a slain gunman returns home. According to local media in Kansas City, Missouri, Nadir Soofi will be buried today. He is one of the two men that targeted that event that offended many Muslims but featuring cartoon images of the Prophet Muhammad.

And the feds are scouring the online contacts of the other gunman, Elton Simpson. They are especially focused on Junaid Hussain, a British hacker linked to ISIS and believed to be operating in Syria.

CNN's Kyung Lah is in Phoenix where Soofi and Simpson shared an apartment. Good morning.

[09:05:01] KYUNG LAH, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. We are learning much more about Elton Simpson, and I want you to take a look at this video. The video itself is innocuous. It is from 2012, it's a fundraiser, but we actually see Elton Simpson and we get a sense of his personality. We have been hearing all week that he was so mild-mannered, that he wasn't violent, that he was calm. You actually see it now and can hear it in his voice, and we are hearing the fortitude of his faith in this video clip. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ELTON SIMPSON, TEXAS SHOOTER: It recharges your Iman as well when you come together and you pray five times a day with the brothers, and it provides for you a form of weaponry to go out into the real world and use that weaponry to shield you against the (INAUDIBLE) -- (END VIDEO CLIP)

LAH: Friends say he converted to Islam while in high school to stay out of trouble, and that's why his family supported him in his choices that he continue to study it as he became an older man.

We also interviewed a pastor friend of his. Yes, an evangelical pastor, they were friends at work, they debated theology often. And even though it doesn't make sense to many people, this pastor believes that this violence in Texas, that it may have felt like a logical step for Elton Simpson. Here is what he says.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PASTOR VOCAB MALONE, ROOSEVELT COMMUNITY CHURCH: I was surprised but not shocked. I wouldn't put it past him because I understood the sincerity of his beliefs, and he had expressed to me admiration, specifically for Osama bin Laden, he used the word "hero."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAH: The FBI wants to know whether these choices that Simpson and his shooter friend, the one who went with him to Texas, if they were directed or inspired by ISIS, specifically their connection to Junaid Hussain, that British hacker you were referring to. They want to know how closely they were all aligned.

Carol.

COSTELLO: Alright. Kyung Lah reporting live from Phoenix this morning. Thank you.

Next hour on Capitol Hill, lawmakers will look at the alarming evolution of terrorist recruitment and its use of social media. The Senate's Committee on Homeland Security will investigate. And one of those testifying before that committee will be CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen. He joins us now from our Washington bureau.

Good morning, Peter.

PETER BERGEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Good morning, Carol.

COSTELLO: You also run an organization called the New America Foundation and that foundation studies online activity. What can you tell us about the online activity that attracts young Americans to turn, to be radicalized?

BERGEN: We looked at 62 cases of people in the United States who have been involved in Syria-related militant activity, whether trying to go to Syria, or helping others get to Syria, or fighting there. These 62 individuals -- 8 out of 10 of them are active online, distributing jihadi propaganda, even communicating, as Elton Simpson did, with people in ISIS overseas. So that's the profile.

Interestingly, Carol, about a fifth of them are females, so this is kind of an unprecedented finding. For the previous holy wars overseas did not attract females, and of course, these are rather misogynistic groups, so it's interesting that women are kind of volunteering to be part of them.

We also found that they are all over the United States. We found cases in 19 states, and the FBI director Jim Comey has said that there are cases in 50 states, but of course many of those are not public as of yet. And we also found that these were a very young group of people, which kind of explains their interest in social media, the average age of 25, quite a number of teenagers, including girls as young as 15, so that's the profile that I will be discussing today, Carol, with the committee.

COSTELLO: And the other thing that your foundation found, there is no common threat among these young people. I guess the only common threat is they are young, and they become radicalized online, and that's it.

BERGEN: Yes, they are from every ethnic group. Take the case in Garland, Texas, an African-American and somebody who is half Pakistani and half American in terms of birth. And we have seen Caucasians and Somali-Americans, Arab-Americans, we've seen Bosnian-Americans, and that's what makes it difficult for law enforcement. The one group we are not really seeing is Syrian-Americans fighting in Syria. It's every ethnic group, it's from every state and that adds to the complexity for law enforcement.

The good news is that the people we are seeing going to Syria are not returning to United States, very rarely have they come back. The problem that we are seeing is people who are inspired by ISIS, as we saw on Sunday night, and that is a problem, but at the end of the day, those two guys are dead, and they didn't succeed at all in what they planned to do.

[09:10:08] COSTELLO: Peter Bergen, thank you so much. I'll let you get - because I know you have to go testify before that committee. So Peter Bergen, many thanks for joining us this morning.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, the Deflategate report is out and it found that Tom Brady kind of sort of likely may have known something about those underinflated footballs. Should he be suspended? We'll talk about that next.

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COSTELLO: Patriots fans would call Deflategate anything but wicked awesome. Check out "The Boston Globe." It knocked the Boston bombing trial right off the front page. An NFL Commission report finding quarterback Tom Brady likely knew footballs he was using during the first half of the AFC Title game were underinflated. The most damming evidence? Text messages between team employees discussing deflating footballs, with talk of cash, free shoes and autographs from Brady.

Here is one of those text exchanges from October. McNally: "Tom sucks...I'm going to make that next ball a (EXPLETIVE) balloon." Jastremski: "Talked to him last night [Brady]. He actually brought you up and said you must have a lot of stress trying to get them done..." Interesting, right? Now what? To help answer that question, CNN sports guru, Andy Scholes. Good morning, Andy.

[09:15:00] ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR: Good morning, Carol.

COSTELLO: I want to start with the language that's in the Wells report. It's used to describe Brady's knowledge of the deflation of the footballs, quote, "Based on the evidence, it is also our view that it is more probable than not that Tom Brady was at least generally aware of inappropriate activities involving the release of air from Patriots game balls."

So, not strong language here, not exactly an indictment. What is it?

SCHOLES: Well, you know, Carol, you said, you know, generally aware. They had -- they worded it like that because there is no concrete evidence, you know? There is no video of somebody taking air out of the footballs, and no eyewitness of it happening, no one is ratting in the Patriots organization. It's a mountain of circumstantial evidence. Now, it's a huge mountain. You showed those text messages there between McNally and Jastremski, and then you got the text messages between Jastremski and Brady.

And there's two things that really make Brady look bad in the Ted Wells report, Carol. There's the fact he would not turn over his text messages or e-mails, helping out the investigation, and then there's the fact that he never talked to Jastremski on the phone. Then, all of a sudden, the deflategate news comes out, and he speaks to Jastremski multiple times more than 25 minutes at a time. It really doesn't make Brady look very well, and it really doesn't, you know, go well with his whole story that he knew nothing about --

COSTELLO: OK.

SCHOLES: -- the air in these footballs.

COSTELLO: OK. So, why did these two ball boys have to hand their phones over their texts and Tom Brady didn't have to?

SCHOLES: They're using team phones. And they really had no choice in the matter. They had to hand them over, where I guess Brady was like, it's my phone. I'm not giving you anything.

COSTELLO: Really? But doesn't the commissioner still have to act? Doesn't he have to do something with Tom Brady?

SCHOLES: You know, there's no camps on this thing. There's a camp that thinks Tom Brady is going to be suspended, and there's the other that thinks he won't.

I'm on the camp that thinks he will be suspended, Carol, because I think back to bountygate with Sean Payton. Sean Payton, when the NFL was investigating bountygate basically said, I know nothing about this and I'm not going to cooperate with your investigation. He ended up getting suspended for the entire season. Now, is deflated footballs as serious as bounties for players, of

course not. But, you know, I think Tom Brady, he's kind of the same boat. He's saying, you know, I don't know about deflated footballs and I'm not going to cooperate with your investigation. I think he's going to get suspended for at least game.

And, Carol, that one game is a huge one for the NFL. It's the opening game of the season, Thursday night football against the Steelers. So, if he sits out that one, it would be a really big deal because it's the most watched game of the season generally, up until the playoffs. And if Jimmy Garoppolo is starting for the Patriots, they'll probably have less much less appeal than it would be with Tom Brady was of course in their center.

COSTELLO: And Steelers fans will be rejoicing.

SCHOLES: Right.

COSTELLO: Final question: so Mr. Kraft is a powerful owner. So, won't he put pressure on the NFL commissioner to not do a thing?

SCHOLES: Well, you know, Robert Kraft and Roger Goodell are known to be good friends. But it was interesting that Kraft, immediately, as soon as this report came out, he already had a statement ready to go, basically challenging it, and saying that, I can't believe that the NFL is not considering the atmospheric condition, you know, excuse that the Patriots try to use, and even trying to say that Colts' balls were also a little underinflated, but --

COSTELLO: One of the guys called himself "the deflator."

SCHOLES: Exactly. I mean, the circumstantial evidence is just so, so great. I couldn't believe that actually the Patriots tried to play that angle. It's going to be interesting to see, Carol, what Tom Brady says about this. Is he going to take the "I'm sorry, I was wrong, I mess" angle or is he going to stick to his guns and say I know nothing about this? It's going to be interesting to see what he says when he eventually does speak about this whole deflategate debacle.

COSTELLO: I hope he won't be wearing that hat again.

Andy Scholes, thanks so much. I appreciate it.

Still to come, you ain't seen nothing yet. That threat coming from an ISIS jihadi after two gunmen open fire in Texas. We'll talk about that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:22:32] COSTELLO: The U.S. is ramping up the fight against ISIS. Any day now, the Pentagon is expected to begin a controversial program to train moderate Syrian rebels in Turkey and Jordan. The goal: to equip these rebels with the necessary fighting skills to defend their villages against ISIS, all of this according to several U.S. officials. At least 400 U.S. military trainers already on the ground. They're

expected to focus on things like small arms, medical gear and battlefield tactics.

In the meantime, a top Syrian opposition force leader tells CNN he is disappointed with U.S. support and he says he needs about 30,000 people trained in order to establish a true fighting force. Right now, the U.S. only plans to train about 5,000 fighters per year.

So, let's talk about that with a Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin. He's a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Thank you, sir, for joining me this morning.

REP. LEE ZELDIN (R), NEW YORK: It's great to be back with you, Carol.

COSTELLO: It's great to have you here.

So, do you think training 5,000 moderate rebels is really going to make a dent in the fight against ISIS?

ZELDIN: Well, some of the Syrian rebels aren't focused on fighting ISIS. They are focused on taking out Assad. So, that is an added challenge as well, that focus. 5,000 may very well be well short of what is needed to actually take out ISIS. It will be good to have more trained Syrian rebels on the ground, bringing the fight to ISIS.

But we certainly have to go about this with the reality they are being outmanned. They're being outgunned. And some of the Syrian rebels that we're training aren't focused on defeating ISIS.

COSTELLO: And it's not like you can train them in a day, right?

ZELDIN: Well, right. And, you know, ISIS members right now are getting real-life battlefield training as they operate. They have been for several months gaining real-world experience on the ground. So, getting training is one thing. Actually applying it is a whole other thing.

And ISIS continues to recruit additional members. So, an estimate that might say ISIS has tens of thousands of people fighting on their behalf. You know, every day that number seems to be drastically increasing.

COSTELLO: Yes. So, let's talk about the recruitment, and I want to turn our attention to the Texas attack right now. And we know one gunman has exchanged tweets with the British hacker linked to ISIS. In fact, that jihadi tweeted, quote, "Ain't seen nothing yet."

How worried should we be?

[09:25:01] ZELDIN: Well, it's a very threat. So, I represent a district in New York. Just a couple of weeks ago, there were two Queens women that were arrested with propane tanks in their apartment, had every intention of detonating pressure cooker bombs in New York. U.S. citizens, self radicalized, considered themselves to be citizens of the Islamic State.

Right now in Dallas, people are talking about what has happened in the last few days. And all across America, we have individuals who are becoming ISIS sympathizers. We need to boost our intelligence capability to foil these attacks before they happen. We have to secure our entry process to insure that anyone who leaves, that we have accountability when they come back, as well as foreign fighters who tried to gain entry to the United States.

So -- and there's a lot that we need to do, but the fact is, we really have to defeat the threat overseas if we don't want to face it here at home.

COSTELLO: So, what more should we be doing to do that?

ZELDIN: Well, for one -- we have a two-star general on the ground in Iraq, for example, and a lot of people know who was -- the military general who is in charge of the surge in Iraq, everybody knows it was General David Petraeus. He was given the flexibility and resources that he needed to accomplish his mission.

We have a two-star general on the ground right now who -- when I asked at a foreign affairs committee recently whether or not that general has the authority on his own to be able to authorize a mission maybe to take out Abu Bakr al Baghdadi or capture important, actionable intelligence, using a Navy SEAL team or Army Rangers or Green Berets, and what was answered back, is the two-star general on the ground can make a recommendation. We are relying on Iraqi military and law enforcement to finish the job in Iraq, and many of them won't even show up to work.

They don't fight like American soldiers who fight for love of country, and camaraderie and the esprit de corps. So, we need to insure that the thousands of troops that we have on the ground are being well-led with the flexibility they need to accomplish their mission and we also need to bring coalition partners into the fight every day.

COSTELLO: So, let me get this straight -- you are saying that American troops need to take over the fight, more boots on the ground to defeat ISIS in Iraq? Is that what you're saying?

ZELDIN: No. So, as far as using American military, I am saying when we can use special operations forces. I don't support an occupation. There is no need for an enduring ground operation. But under the cover of darkness, you know, we have a Navy SEAL team that is capable of coming after the sunset. For us, we can turn night into day. We can leave before the sun comes up.

It seems at times like our special operations when operating on the well-executed operations, it seems like they are invincible. It has to be planned, well executed missions. But I do support the use of U.S. special operations, and when we have good intelligence that there is a high value target that we are capable of taking out using our best of the best.

COSTELLO: Congressman Lee Zeldin, thank you so much for your insight. I appreciate it.

ZELDIN: Thank you, Carol.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, Mike Huckabee and many of his rivals in the race for the White House are worth millions of dollars. So, aren't they trying so hard to convince you of their populist principles? We'll talk about that next.

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